From 2003 to 2005 he served as a Dean and Head of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo. From 2005 to 2008 he was the Vice President of Science Council of Japan. From 2007 to 2009 he was the Managing Director, Executive Vice President, visiting professor at the University of Tokyo. From 2016 to 2018 he was the Vice President of the Tokyo University of Science.
He received the following awards: Siebold Prize,, Japan Academy Prize and Imperial Prize, the Prince Hitachi Prize for Comparative Oncology, Erwin-Stein Prize, and President of Lithuania. He is a foreign member of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.
His professional interests are developmental biology, cell biology, and organogenesis,